Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake. I like cake.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Immigrants and the "social contract"

Having railed against the repulsive attitude that this country has to immigrants, it is time to propose a solution—and it is a solution that could solve other problems too.

NuLabour has cracked down hard on non-EU immigrants because this is the only way of responding to the perceived problem of immigration. The main problem with immigration—provided you are not simply a BNP moron who hates the sight of "darkies"—is that they take up resources, such as benefits.

The trouble is that non-EU immigrants cannot claim benefits and so they tend to be the ones that work. Many EU citizens work too, but they are allowed to bring in families that are eligible for benefits and do not work at all.

So, here is my proposed solution, and it is a solution designed to be implemented tomorrow—that is, it assumes that we are still in the EU, etc. So, here it is: no immigrant may claim benefits until they have been working—and contributing tax (i.e. cash in hand work will not count)—for four years.

But wait! The EU will not let us treat EU citizens any differently to British citizens. Great! The same thing applies across the board, for British citizens too.

When National Insurance was first implemented, you had to have been paying in for a certain amount of time—and earned your "stamps"—before you could start getting payouts. To an extent, this is still the case, but other benefits are not, theoretically, part of the National Insurance system, so they are paid out without any requirement to have paid in.

This should stop, right now.

So, everyone—regardless of where they are from originally—gets treated in exactly the same way: no one shall receive any benefits until they have paid tax into the system for four years (an arbitrary number—we could make it higher, if you like, or lower—four years seems a reasonable time to me).

In this way:

we can stop paying for people's lifestyle choices (including encouraging the feckless to have children)

we can diffuse the resentment based on the "bloody immigrants, coming here and stealing our benefits" argument

we give people an incentive to pay tax rather than do cash-in-hand work; we stop people coming here with massive families in order to soak our ridiculously generous benefits system (and thus reduce immigration)

we can remove these spiteful bars to non-EU immigrants working (and thus allow private companies to hire who the fuck they want)

it will provide us with an incentive to ensure that our schooling is up to scratch (since natives will be competing with immigrants on an equal footing)

it allows us to open our borders to those who want to come and work here (and neutralises Hayek's problems with doing so whilst a Welfare State exists); and, of course, we will substantially reduce our social security bill.

A lot of people on the Left tend to witter on about the "social contract". Now, your humble Devil cannot remember voluntarily signing such a thing—however, if one is being generous, one could assume that paying tax is when you start contributing your part to the "social contract".

If you don't pay in, then you shouldn't get the benefits. It's that simple.

This is a easy-to-understand, reasonable and rational response to a good number of the problems that we have in this country.

Any questions?

UPDATE: as regards slinging those who have worked to the current benefits system into the street, I suggest that the new regime would be widely publicised—and brought in eight and a half months after its announcement. W ecould make it nine months, but that might well result in a rash of people quickly conceiving and, as such, a massive glut of largely unwanted children to support.

What happens if the feckless non-taxpayers are able to withstand the withholding of benefits (i.e. through casual work, petty crime, etc), but they have dependent children who we don't want to see suffer, and who we suspect will grow up to be even more troublesome?

"as regards slinging those who have worked to the current benefits system into the street, I suggest that the new regime would be widely publicised—and brought in eight and a half months after its announcement. W ecould make it nine months, but that might well result in a rash of people quickly conceiving and, as such, a massive glut of largely unwanted children to support. "

Do you think the kind of people apt to do this would read government edicts? Or are you counting on the grapevine to spread the word?

I have a few questions on the LibDem's proposal for "regional immigrants". How will that work then? Will immigrants need travel documents to move from region to region to ensure they are there for purposes other than work?

It's a pity BJ Vorster and PW Botha are no longer with us, they may have been able to provide Nick Clegg with information on how the dompas used to work.

Englishman is right, and DK is wrong. We, the English were never asked if we wanted our country turned into a multiracial/multicultural society. Those who express anti-immigrant views should not be vilified. This vilification is as much a knee-jerk reaction as any opinion expressed by Col Blimp.

This argument is not about benefits, it is about changing my country socially and culturally. I don't want to and I wasn't asked. If immigration is such a good thing, lets have a discussion followed by a referendum.

As to the wife problem - just move to her country. If they would let you that is.

hey englishman,i am not a muslim.i love my english friends and all the others.but do you remember the "jalliwallah baug massacre" of 1600 defenceless women and children.or are you historically compromised?

>So Mohammed comes here and does a minimum wage job for four years. He then imports his wife and six children, who are entitled to education at the taxpayers expense, costing us at least £30k a year before we start thinking about accomodation and health costs.

Do you know why we can afford to spend that much on educating children in this country? Because when they leave school they pay enough tax on average to provide a return on that investment.

In fact, if Mo's children are say, 8 years old, then we're getting a discount on that investment because they've had 3-4 years of education at the expense of some other country.

>So millions of my fellow countrymen will condemned to permanent unemployment and misery.

I'd say that it's a fantasy that there are millions of drooling village idiots wandering around the UK looking longingly at the shitty jobs being done by immigrants, but looking at you I can't be so sure.

Would it not be preposterous to have enemies as friends?if such an absurdity could be squared in the first place?the only thing that i want from muslims is thier departure to thier own countries where they can fully experience the islamic way of life,then perhaps the English people would be able to enjoy thiers .

Interesting to see this here- Sunny Hundall at Liberal Conspiracy was advocating precisely the same policy the other day.

Welfare reform and open borders is clearly the smart way forward on immigration- I think the only bit that's missing is an emphasis on the concept of citizenship and that all benefits be replaced with a citizens right to a basic income.

Mr, Devil, the immigrant issue is nothing other than people farming when you strip away the nice words and look at the reality.

You don't want to be bothered with less able fellow countrymen, so you discard them and instead, import the wealthy middle-class from other countries(so they can get even wealthier whilst leaving the mess at home behind...) -- just like a farmer swaps his current livestock for a higher performing breed.

But you also turn the oiks you no longer want lose, that is, not only are you depriving them of their space in our society (and give it to educated and wealthy immigrants who are more deserving in your eyes) but you also want to stop paying for making the local oiks homeless -- because they are undeserving, feckless, incapable and so on. You despise them for being so useless and such losers.

Yes, they are not great people to have around -- they are incapable, messy, crazy, uneducated and everything that a middle-class person is not. But they are humans too, and you only avoided their fate by accident of birth and then using your chances and ability. Between your lot in life and theirs, not a lot protects you, a little bit of bad luck can easily see you changing social place to join their ranks.

Fact is, humanity has a spread of people -- some clever, some dumb, some fit, some disabled. As they said a long time ago: 'the poor will always be with us'. That is because we will always produce a variance of people, we're not a race of super beings -- and Euthanasia as a way of keeping down the human detritus has been discarded because it's an evil method.

What you're championing is a superiority ideology in the guise of equality and libertarianism -- you want to abolish poverty and inability with displacement -- and then you want to abolish the alms for the fellow countrymen made redundant as a result.

You pro-immigration-anti-native-chav stance is euthanasia light in a way... the next logical step in your thinking is to put our useless oiks onto cattle trucks and ship them to the join the oiks the rich immigrants left behind at home.

So, your initial motives may be libertarian, but the consequences of them are fascist.

The different is the behaviour of the American government is obviously in violation of their Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The dispicable behaviour of some of these followers of 'Islam' is a logical consequence of them believing the crap in the Koran.

Got that? Islam is an ideology. A totalitarian, globalist ideology that sactions murder and paedophilia etc and is not just a religion, but a cultural and political system as well, so one MUST consider an increased probability of those claiming to be 'Muslims' behaving in such ways.

The ultimate goal of any true Muslim is converting the world to the House of Allah.

The point is that when someone calls themselves Muslim first it shows they identify more with that cult than say, individual liberty and private property rights. You then study the thing that follow and all the 'bad' acts committed by Muslims in the name of Islam aren't isolated incidents, but can be sourced back to the ideology.